Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question.
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C.S. Peirce
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Sweden minus Norway
On September 23, 1905, Norway and Sweden signed the “Karlstad treaty,” peacefully dissolving the union between the two countries.
“Yes,” President Joe Biden stated unequivocally in answer to an October 2021 CNN townhall question on whether he would “vow to protect Taiwan.” Biden repeated that “yes” three more times in his full reply.
Months earlier, this president spoke of democratic Taiwan as one of our key allies that we have a “sacred commitment” to defend.
“Yes,” Mr. Biden emphatically informed a reporter back in May of this year who inquired, “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”
Last Sunday on 60 Minutes, correspondent Scott Pelley asked President Biden point-blank: “Would US forces defend the island?”
Again, the president replied, “Yes.”
“So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, U.S. forces — U.S. men and women — would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?” Pelley followed up.
“Yes,” answered Biden.
Handlers-R-Us at The White House have walked back each and every one of these statements by the commander-in-chief to maintain the charade of “strategic ambiguity” — the U.S. strategy of not saying quite how we will respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. A thoroughly silly policy.
And — come’on man! — the cat is out of the bag! Mr. Biden’s statements, as Aaron Blake wrote in The Washington Post, amount to “firmly committing to send troops to defend Taiwan if China invades.”
I hope the United States and other countries will stand — militarily — with Taiwan, and thereby prevent the Beijing bullies from snuffing out the freedom of 24 million free Taiwanese.
Strength and unity and clarity of purpose are our best weapons against war.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Sir Karl Raimund Popper
We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Vol. 2, Ch. 21 “An Evaluation of the Prophecy.”
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Emancipation Proclaimed
On September 22, 1862, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation that he would order the emancipation of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. None returned, and the subsequent order, signed and issued January 1, 1863, took effect except in locations where the Union had already mostly regained control.
The idea that those who are indicted for a serious crime may not buy a gun, is, I think, what many in America might think of as “common sense gun control.”
But it isn’t, for it rubs against the grain of the American legal tradition.
The pseudo-commonsense view appears nonsensical when boldly defended by the U.S. attorney’s office, which, The Texas Tribune informs us, argued that a “law to prohibit those under felony indictment from obtaining guns does not interfere with the Second Amendment ‘because it does not disarm felony indictees who already had guns and does not prohibit possession or public carry.’”
That argument boils down to this: if you retain some relevant gun rights, others may be taken away.
Compare it to free speech: if the government allows you to talk freely with your family, its regulation of your conversations with neighbors is hunky-dory!
“The Second Amendment has always allowed laws restricting the gun rights of groups viewed by legislatures as posing a public-safety risk,” the prosecution elucidated, “including those accused but not convicted of wrongdoing.”
But U.S. District Judge David Counts, introduced in every account of this I’ve read so far as “appointed by former President Donald Trump” — so that must be important, eh? — denies this. He found no historical precedent for disallowing the accused and indicted from buying firearms.
Therefore, based on the recent Supreme Court decision,* Judge Countssays the government has no case. It’s still innocent until proven guilty.
That is, governments may not “take away” our rights until convicted of a specific crime, punishment for which is loss of liberty.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* That U.S. Supreme Court case is New York State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Bruen.
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T.S. Eliot
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm, but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
Thomas Stearns Eliot, The Cocktail Party (1948).
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Santa Claus
On September 21, 1897, the “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” editorial was published in the New York Sun. Note how long before Christmas this is. The Christmas season has long been a long affair.
Groucho Marx famously quipped that he wouldn’t want to join any club that would have him as a member. Some people take this hankering to an extreme: they want to force every group averse to their membership to accept them.
Keywords: forced inclusion. The current political rage — thought to be a “right.”
Now, Yeshiva University, which calls itself “the world’s premier Torah-based institution of higher education,” does not accept homosexuality. It’s against the Law.
And by “the Law” they mean: the ancient Jewish scriptures.
For those of us who are neither Jewish nor gay, we might look upon both groups as “clubs.” And being in neither, we might just shrug; we aren’t going to be accepted in the either ranks and that’s just fine.
But some students at Yeshiva University tried to form an LGBT group on campus. The university resisted, the case went to court, and a court ordered the university to accept the group. And then last week, the Supreme Court refused to order a stay on the lower court’s order.
In reaction, Yeshiva University has suspended all campus club activities.
“Every faith-based university in the country has the right to work with its students, including its LGBTQ students, to establish the clubs, places and spaces that fit within its faith tradition,” the university’s president proclaimed. “Yeshiva University simply seeks that same right of self-determination.”
Since the right to “freedom of association” is part of the Bill of Rights, one might think this would be non-controversial in America. And settled law.
But one would be wrong. On both counts.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Paul Feyerabend
Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages. In a democracy it should be separated from the state just as churches are now separated from the state.